In a busy London cafe, Pete Phoenix pushes his vegan mash aside and starts producing laminated sheets from his bag. He is talking me excitedly through the past three decades of direct action – the anti-roads protests, Reclaim the Streets, Occupy and much more.
The old photos, flyers and ancient VHS videotapes he and fellow activists have collated form a remarkable social history of the UK and global protest movement, and incidentally tell Phoenix’s own life story. Because whether it was the M11 protests, a gigantic Reclaim the Streets party or the occupation of a landmark building in central London (symbolising for the protesters everything that is wrong with capitalism), Phoenix was there.
A few weeks away from his 47th birthday, Phoenix is dressed in his activist “uniform” of baggy trousers and heavy boots, with small DIY tools hanging from his pockets. Should he need to make the point that people are sleeping on the streets while many habitable buildings have lain empty for years, he is agile enough to scale a wall at a moment’s notice.
Phoenix began squatting aged 19, and his motivation was initially practical rather than ideological. London rents were too much for people like him; in those days he worked on commission in telesales. “Sell or starve, I called it,” he says.
But while for many squatting was a transient phase, it became a way of life for Phoenix, leading to involvement in various protest movements. He has since been through hundreds of evictions, dozens of campaigns and several arrests.
“We’ve been so busy getting evicted that, until now, we haven’t had time to write the story,” he says of the project he and his fellow activists have been working on, documenting the past 30 years of activism. Although the nomadic activist life brings many freedoms and a certain lightness of being, he was getting tired of shlepping around 20 shoeboxes containing his personal archive.
The group’s exhibition, Resistance, runs at the Subculture Archives in London until Thursday – after that, they are hoping to take it to other cities around the UK. It is the first exhibition of its kind and includes decades of raw footage loosely divided into photos, written material (including spoof newspapers such as the Spun and the Evading Standards) and, as technology improved over the years, increasingly sophisticated video from groups including Undercurrents, VisionOntv and Reel News.
It is an interactive exhibition and also a participatory one. A series of MP3 players are available for people to record their own protest memories and activists are on hand to assist visitors with uploading their own protest material to add to the core exhibits.
This history of protest is also a history of the evolution of the internet. When Phoenix first got involved in protest in the early 1990s, communication was by word of mouth and an A4 information sheet known as FIN – Free Information Network – distributed through alternative bookshops. As social media took off, the ability for direct-action protesters to get organised expanded. It is doubtful that coordinated global protests against the Iraq war and worldwide anti-globalisation protests could have happened without the internet.
The exhibition begins with the anti-road protests in Twyford Down. In the early 1990s, a Hampshire hillside became the focus of protests to prevent an extension of the M3 motorway being built there. Protesters reported being beaten by police and security guards and, ultimately, the road-building went ahead. But the protest had received extensive media coverage and sowed the seeds of doubt in public consciousness about the wisdom of allowing diggers to churn up vast tracts of countryside and ultimately generate more traffic.
In January 1996, protesters dubbed “eco-warriors” by the media locked themselves to trees to prevent the construction of the Newbury bypass. As in Twyford Down, the battle was lost, 10,000 trees were removed and – despite the presence of 27 activist camps – the road was built.
But losing these battles led to winning the war against the construction of new roads. The rationale behind the protests had penetrated public consciousness and the Thatcher government’s road-building programme was scaled back from 600 to 150. When Labour came to power in 1997, the road-building programme was scrapped entirely, with more focus given to developing the public transport network.
Twyford Down was Phoenix’s direct-action apprenticeship. He became skilled at climbing trees and locking himself to heavy machinery, and developed the stoicism to endure cold, wet weather miles away from food, baths, toilets and shelter. He also began to understand the principles underpinning protest. “You have to be relentless. Never give up,” he says. “The system can brush off a single protest, but what it can’t cope with is years and years of sustained activism.”
While hanging from the branches of a 40ft tree, or bolted on to a gigantic digger, Phoenix also learned the effectiveness of frontline humour – not only to keep the activists going, but also as a way of engaging with police and security guards and de-escalating tensions.
The anti-roads protests led the way for the anti-war protests. In February 2003, the largest-ever protest against the invasion of Iraq took place, with millions of protesters in 133 cities taking to the streets. The invasion went ahead anyway, much to protesters’ dismay.
The exhibition acknowledges the much longer history of protest from Magna Carta to the Diggers, the suffragettes and the current direct-action protests, including disability rights, LGBTI and Black Lives Matter campaigners, as well as protests for the rights of migrants and refugees.
“It’s not just about protesting against what’s wrong,” says Phoenix. “Twice as much energy should be put into protesting for what we want, creating the kind of world we want to live in. We’re pro-community, pro-public transport, pro-permaculture, pro-solutions. We need a kind of Marshall plan for the planet. Unless we cooperate, we’re in danger of turning the whole world into ashes. The system we have at the moment is destroying our air and water. We can’t have infinite growth on a finite planet.”
Phoenix’s three decades of direct action could not be predicted from his childhood. His father was in the Royal Marines and, growing up, Phoenix’s cultural references were military ones. He spent a lot of time watching war films and says this influenced him to use some of the strategies of war to engage in peaceful, non-violent protest.
Hundreds of activists have come and gone. They pop up at a few protests, get burnt out or disillusioned and move on. How has Phoenix stayed the course? It wasn’t easy at Twyford Down in 1992 and he laments the increasing difficulties that activists face now.
“We have lost so many of our human rights and civil liberties since I started out. The right to silence when arrested has been eroded. Parliament Square has historically been a place where protesters could make their concerns known to MPs on their way into the Commons. But now you have to apply to the Greater London authority to get permission to protest there.”
But the increasingly harsh political terrain has not deterred him. He continues to enjoy the freedoms and pleasures of living outside the rat race and believes there have been many victories. It is these that keep him going.
“We always use every opportunity during a direct action to speak to people on the ‘other side’ and explain what we’re doing. One story sent to us for the exhibition was about a protester who got chatting to a guy who had been a security guard at Twyford Down. He had listened to what we said, stopped working as a security guard, went on a permaculture course and transformed his life. A small group of dedicated people can bring about a lot of change.
“Lots of things that we fought hard to put on the agenda – such as a sustainable transport policy and an awareness of food miles – are now mainstream.”
He has been arrested seven times for minor offences linked to direct action but has never been jailed. “Arrest is often just a way of the police removing people from a protest site and many aren’t charged with anything.”
Retirement isn’t on the cards, although Phoenix is in the process of writing his memoirs. His exuberance is undimmed. “I hope I’ll still be doing this when I’m 70, but I do need to pace myself a bit more these days.”
He says younger activists often ask where he gets his energy from. “I’m an old-school raver and I’ve got stamina. That’s what I say to the youngsters when they’re flagging and I’m still dancing at 9 or 10am after an all-night party.”
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